Police said they and others questioned about a hotel theft. Punk group members say they were in custody on Sunday and Monday for several hours, too

Wearing masks members of Russian punk group Pussy Riot, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, left, and Maria Alyokhinaspeak to journalists after being released from a police station in Soch on Tuesday. They had been held for about three hours on accusations of theft from a hotel.

Members of the Russian punk rock band Pussy Riot are released from police custody in the Winter Olympic host city Sochi after being detained at a hotel. Rough Cut (no reporter narration).

SOCHI, RUSSIA —Two members of the Russian punk group Pussy Riot have been released after being detained by police Friday in Sochi, the host city of the Winter Olympics.

No charges were filed against Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Maria Alekhina, who were held along with several other people near the city's ferry terminal, a popular area for fans celebrating the Olympics.

It was their third detention three days, Tolokonnikova said via Twitter.

Photographs showed the two women leaving the station wearing ski masks and their trademark performance bright tights and dresses about three hours after they had been stopped by police on a street in Sochi.

Seven other people who were detained with them also were released Tuesday.

Sochi police confirmed the arrest to the Russian news agency Interfax and they were interrogated “in connection with the theft at the hotel” where they were staying.

Police said all hotel guests had been interrogated in a theft, Interfax reported, quoting a police statement.

Interfax reported a person at Malakhit Hotel confirmed a purse had gone missing and police were called in.

Tolokonnikova said the detention was the latest in a series of harassments against the group since Sunday. She said they had been detained for several hours on the previous two days.

“We members of Pussy Riot have been here since late Sunday and we were constantly detained since then,” Tolokonnikova said after her release. “We are constantly surrounded by people, not you journalists, but people who are shadowing us, following our every move and looking for any excuse to detain us.”

A lawyer for the group, Alexander Popkov, told the Associated Press that police had been refusing to say if the group was suspected of a crime or were witnesses. They were taken to the police station in Adler, a suburb of Sochi that is home to the Olympic Park, because a theft had been reported from the hotel where they were staying, Popkov said.

“They are in total ignorance of what is going on. They were told they were not being detained but being asked in for questioning but the police are not letting them go,” Popkov said while they were in custody.

Pussy Riot, a performance-art collective which edits its actions into music videos, has become an international flashpoint for those who contend Vladimir Putin’s government has exceeded its authority in dealing with an array of issues, notably human and gay rights.

Tolokonnikova and Alekhina said authorities used “force” during the detention near the ferry terminal area where booths celebrating the Olympics have been set up. The area is about 30 kilometres north of the seaside Olympic venues.

“At the moment of detention, we were not conducting any actions, we were walking in Sochi,” Tolokonnikova wrote on Twitter while being held by police.

“We are in Sochi with the goal of staging a Pussy Riot protest. The song is called ‘Putin will teach you to love the motherland.’”

Journalist Eugene Feldman said on Twitter that he, Tolokonnikova, Alekhina, activists and other journalists were detailed by police and taken to the police station.

Radio Liberty broadcast an interview with Tolokonnikova as she was inside the police arrest van, they said.

Alekhina and Tolokonnikova spent nearly two years in prison but were released in December. They were convicted of hooliganism after staging a protest in Moscow’s largest cathedral in opposition to President Vladimir Putin’s government.

Alekhina and Tolokonnikova recently visited the U.S. and Germany to take part in an Amnesty International concert.

The women said their protest performance at the cathedral was aimed at raising concern about the close ties between the church and state.

Russia has put severe limitations on protests in Sochi during the Olympics, ordering that any demonstration must get advance approval and be held only in the neighbourhood of Khosta, an area between Adler and downtown Sochi that is unlikely to be visited by outsiders.

Russia’s suppression of protests has been widely denounced in the West and the Pussy Riot detentions brought renewed criticism.

“In Putin’s Russia, the authorities have turned the Olympic rings - a worldwide symbol of hope and striving for the best of the human spirit - into handcuffs to shackle freedom of expression,” John Dalhuisen, Europe director for Amnesty International, said in a statement.

The actions taken against Pussy Riot come a day after an Italian transgender activist and former lawmaker was detained at the Olympics. Vladimir Luxuria was stopped while carrying a rainbow flag that read in Russian: “Gay is OK.” On Sunday, Luxuria said she was held by police and told not to wear clothing with slogans promoting gay rights.

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